Page 9 of Holly, Jolly, and Oh So Naughty

“Adam, be careful! Watch your back!”

“My back is fine, Hillary,” Dad replies. “You worry too much.”

“Well, I'd better not hear you complaining about that stool giving you aches when it’s your own actions.” Mom chuckles and then inspects the boxes. “Oh, my, this smells amazing! Darling, did you see that the ice rink is open? Maybe we can go this weekend?”

“I’ll think about it,” I say, trying to draw up my calendar from the depths of my tired mind.

“I helped with dinner!” Emma declares, breathless from laughing. “Tell her, Mom!”

“It’s true, she helped.” I smile. “Right, you two get cleaned up and I’ll go get these heated up, alright?”

A round of agreeable murmurs rises from the group. Walking through the lobby, a familiar sense of comfort washes over me. These wooden walls, rickety chairs, and thick carpet have seen everything from me over the years, from failed tests and graduation to crying over boyfriends and fights with the family. It’s really a second home.

As I reach the wooden paneled doors leading further into the inn, I glance over my shoulder. “Emma, do you want garlic bread?”

“Yes, please!”

The door swings open as I walk forward, causing my outstretched hand to miss the handle and instead press against the warm, broad chest of the man coming through from the other side.

“Oh, my, I’m so sorry!” I gasp. A jolt of energy fizzes at my palm, then shoots up my arm like the odd, painful reflex of strikingyour funny bone, and I snatch my hand away. As I do, the containers in my other hand wobble.

The man catches my wrist with soft, strong fingers. With his other hand, he grasps my opposite arm and pulls me against him so our combined torsos prevent the boxes from toppling over and sending pasta all over the floor.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry!” I gasp, torn between staying in a grasp that feels oddly comforting and darting away before the energy simmering under my skin explodes outward.

I’ve never felt anything like it in my life.

I glance up at the stranger and lock eyes with the most deeply intense blue eyes I have ever seen. They twinkle from golden skin, and a few brown curls drift down to get in the way as the man steadies the both of us and then smiles. His smile is wide and warm, and then the corners turn down slightly as if noticing something.

Something that clicks with me at the same moment.

I jerk away from him, hugging the containers to my chest. That electric feeling… I felt it once before. And I’ve seen those blue eyes before. I used to get lost in them daily as time continued on without us.

“You,” I gasp, and a tremor whips down my spine, forcing my shoulders to shake. “What are you… how are you… what?”

“Hello, Lily,” says James Anderson, the man I was certain I would never see again.

4

JAMES

Lily Thompson.

The woman I came halfway across the country to see and then hid from, unable to take that step for fear of what I would see in her eyes.

Now she stands before me, staring up at me, and suddenly, I’m twenty-five again. The world around us melts away, and nothing exists but us.

Her.

She looks exactly as I remember, as if she just stepped right out of my memories. Her long, black hair tumbles around her shoulders in thick waves, with a cluster of curls sweeping across her forehead. She has the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen in my life, a deep emerald jade sparkling under two lined, dark brows. Freckles dance across her button nose and round cheeks that quickly flush pink under my gaze.

I know every detail of her face, and seeing it again squeezes all the air out of my lungs. She looks the same and yet, different. Time weighs on her, like it does on everyone after seven years,but I couldn’t care less. Life leaves its marks, and each line taunts me with the life I could have had with her.

If I had just been stronger and tossed my familial obligations into the wind at an early age, then maybe I would have been happy. Instead, I’m thirty-two years old, mourning the abrupt death of my father, and chasing after the memory of love.

And then Lily smiles. It’s a brilliant, broad smile that lights up her entire face and makes my heart skip a painful beat. Breathing is still impossible. I’m wary of making any movement in case it bursts this little bubble I find myself in.

“James.” Lily says my name like it’s a sweet secret, and it kickstarts me back to life.

---